2. The Kiss of Delirium
2
THE KISS OF DELIRIUM
Finnian
The Present
“Who—loathe—most?” Shivani’s sultry-pitched voice was the goddess’s one and only pleasant attribute.
Finnian blinked a few times, piecing together the words he could not hear from the throbbing of blood in his left ear. His right ear was useless without his hearing aid.
Who do you loathe the most?
It was a taunting question she repeatedly asked him. A tactic to flare his anger. Stir emotions, hoping for a slip-up and desired revelation. Shivani was one of Cassian’s loyal servants—a middle goddess of slaughter.
“I haven’t—since—High God—Rain—Storm—sixteen-hundreds.” She spoke alongside the sound of her sharpening her blade.
I haven’t what?
In the mild break of his torture, Finnian assessed himself. Every inch of his skin felt wet. Sticky, warm, and wet.
High God of Rain and Storm?
The lacerations carved down his abdomen were slowly mending. Beneath the tension of stitching skin, he could feel the blossoming of his organs growing back into their rightful places.
Since the sixteen-hundreds?
He gave up attempting to piece together the sentence, assuming it was another snide comment.
The ominous being to Finnian’s side, an executioner, tightened the chain bound to his shackles, squeezing his wrists and ankles in a vise grip. Muscles burned from his limbs being stretched taut as he hung from the stone wall.
It had been months since he’d seen the slate interior walls of his cell, and while he’d rather cut off his own tongue than confess such a thing, he missed it. He assumed it had been months, at least. Time was lost within the dungeon he was currently confined in.
“Though, he—stouter—you,” Shivani continued. “Had—meat—bones to carve off.”
Finnian got a grip on his panting and ran her words through his mind, slower this time .
Though, he was a bit stouter than you. He had more meat on his bones to carve off.
“And where is this god now?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“Use—imagination—Moros.” Shivani plunged her freshly sharpened blade through Finnian’s ribcage.
He ground his jaws to keep from groaning out, but the sound slipped out of his throat. Agony welled up in his chest. The gush of blood coated his insides like ash to fresh paint.
Use your imagination in Moros?
His teeth chattered and his head went light.
He clenched the muscles in his arms and legs to keep his blood pressure from dropping and clung to a focal point in the back of his mind, far away from the wails of pain echoing up his torso.
Use your imagination. You are in Moros.
Shivani ripped the knife free and stepped back.
The release was as painful as it was relieving. A river of warmth consumed his pant legs. Ragged, wheezing breaths escaped him.
He rolled his neck to lift his head. “Enlighten me.”
With a casual stroke of her arm, she flung the blood from her blade to the side. It splashed and stained bright crimson along the dark stone of the wall.
Finnian focused on her mouth, watching for her response.
Her lips quirked, as if she found his sudden curiosity towards the subject amusing. “The god is trapped inside his own purgatory. He’s no longer a High God. Lost that title decades after he was imprisoned.”
A personalized hell created by Cassian. If Finnian had to guess, his father would be in a similar place.
“Do enjoy our time together, Finny, because the same brutal fate awaits you.” She inched closer. Her tight ponytail pulled back her brunette strands, revealing the glossy bronze skin of her cheeks smudged with his blood. The tip of her blade pressed against the skin of his throat. “Now, be a good boy and tell me where the Himura demigod’s blood is?”
The rush of his internal sounds slowly quietened, making it significantly easier for him to hear her out of his left ear against the silent background of the room.
He stared at her, expressionless, keeping the view of her lips in his periphery to avoid mistaking any of her words—with the added benefit of provoking her. “If it’s the Himura demigod’s blood you seek, why doesn’t Lord Cassian simply go steal some from the veins of my darling nephew?”
Naia, with her new title as the High Goddess of Eternity, remained an uncertainty to the Council. They would not risk starting a feud until they learned more about her power.
The executioner snapped forward, baring its barbed teeth, clearly unamused. A deep-chested growl rumbled in the space between it and Finnian.
Shivani retracted the blade from his throat and examined the sharpness of the tip. “I suppose the time has come for me to leave you to the executioners. This one seems rather testy and in need of a meal.”
Finnian gauged the beast invading his space—nose absent, two rows of teeth split across its face. Its wrinkled, leathery skin looked as if it had once been the flesh of a human, melted and burned to a crisp, the remains solidified. It was truly a horrendous-looking creature.
Prior to his time in Moros, he’d never actually seen an executioner’s face. They were notorious for keeping them hidden in the depths of their hooded cloaks or behind their masks—ashen and made of the bones probably scattered throughout Moros.
Seldomly did Finnian think anything of them. Monsters existed all over, born from divine power or from the wombs of deities. Their intimidating statures, insidiously tall and lanky, and their reputations as devils lurking in the shadows of the Land of the Dead had never frightened Finnian.
That was, until they escorted him into the godsforsaken dungeon he was currently in, bound him in place, and feasted on him for days on end.
He’d black out and have to crawl out of an abyssal landscape—one of Cassian’s illusions. The High God would appear before him, and in a blink, Finnian would descend back into that umbral darkness.
The executioner’s reptilian eyes flickered with an edge of excitement that made Finnian’s skin writhe. If he were honest, the last thing he wanted was to endure another round of the fiendish creature ripping him apart with their teeth.
Out of the two evils, he preferred the goddess of slaughter.
“How many times are you going to let them feast upon my flesh in the name of your defeat?” Finnian gave an exhausted chuckle, dropping his head to focus on the rosy puddle collecting beneath him. The prickling sensation was already dissolving beneath his skin and numbing the misery. “It is no wonder you are a mere middle goddess.”
Shivani forcefully gripped Finnian’s long hair and ripped his head back. Pain ruptured across his scalp like pinpricks. A humorous type of pain compared to the horrors she’d inflicted upon him in the passing months.
You have two types of deities, he could recall his father once saying, those who care about their titles, and those who do not.
Shivani struck him as one who most certainly did. The hunger for power burned like a torch in her eyes.
“Your skill set is of an amateur’s,” he continued to taunt her. “If you plan on taking the title from my elder brother, you still have a long journey ahead of you.”
“You believe yourself to be in a position to mock me?” She jolted her tight grip on his strands, ripping shreds out in between her fingers.
It was brief, but Finnian cringed.
Shivani drew back slightly, her sneer turning into a narrowed gaze, noticing .
A bolt of regret zapped through Finnian’s chest. He forced the tension on his face to loosen, his expression to become impassive.
Shivani’s lips parted into a gut-churning smile, and she delicately brushed her long nails through Finnian’s locks. “My, what beautiful hair you have.”
He swallowed hard, watching closely as Shivani plucked a switchblade out of the pocket of her cargo pants. She ran the steel side of the blade down the length of his hair.
His pulse spiked. The knowing of what was to come churned in his not-yet-regrown stomach.
He’d done well to avoid giving away a piece of him that she could break off and devour.
The first time his mother had dropped a hundred sea urchins on him for losing a battle against a middle god in her arena, Finnian thrashed around on the sand with his airways closing. Panic blared through his pulse as he flailed and tore at his throat. It took hours for the poison to leave his system, during which he became accustomed to the burning quench in his lungs. It taught him how nothing could truly harm a deity.
Apart from one thing—the blood of his own nephew, a demigod from the Himura clan. A poison to all deities. A poison he possessed a syringe of, hidden away safely.
Shivani twirled a strand of Finnian’s hair around the sharp edge of her blade. “Where is it?”
He eyed the dark tuft of his hair between her petite fingers, his anger manifesting with a need to rip forward and crush her windpipe.
She pulled out the slack of his long hair and sliced through it. The severing of the strand reverberated in his skull and echoed in his left ear.
White-hot panic dotted his insides like ink and curdled in his stomach.
Shivani closely tracked every inch of his face, and whatever she noticed in his expression was confirmation she’d finally hit a nerve. “It seems you place a high value on being autonomous.”
Growing up, he never had allowed the servants to touch his hair, despite his mother’s orders to do so. What was his was precisely his. No matter the amount of times Mira had threatened him.
Shivani bit her bottom lip back to contain her sickening, gleeful smile and began hacking off layers at a time.
Every forceful tug and purposeful nick of the blade against his scalp constricted the muscles down his neck and arms.
He channeled his concentration to a single point on the wall straight ahead. Beneath the dancing flame of the sconce, there was an unmoving moth with mottled brown wings.
The unwelcome heat bred from Moros’s inferno nipped at his nape, making it easy to determine how short his hair was. The ends curled and frayed over his forehead, behind his ears.
Shivani paused and leaned in, nose-to-nose with him, as if to demand his attention. “Tell me, Finnian,” she said, slow and tantalizing, “how does it feel?”
She waited until he lowered his eyes onto her before cutting the final lock of his hair.
He swallowed the fire back down his throat. “How does what feel?” He forced out through a vacant tone.
“To be powerless.”
Her words piled into the pit of his core like stones, uprooting the memory of the day he watched Alke’s life end. A sense of helplessness he had spent his whole life trying to avoid jarred through his body.
Before he could react, Shivani cocked her arm out to the side and forcefully thrust her blade into his left ear.
Finnian’s body went limp against the support the shackles provided. He chased his breath. Oxygen, though unnecessary, provided a welcome relief to his exasperated synapses. A distraction from the pulsing agony of the blade protruding from his head.
After Shivani had stabbed him, she handed him over to the executioner, and it fed for what felt like hours.
He looked down. Pieces of his pink, sausage-shaped intestines hung from the hole in his gut. Parts of exposed bone shone through the mutilated meat of his thigh. The feel of its claws rummaging through his intestines and tugging was still fresh, and a shudder wracked through him.
There was an absence of sensations and feelings within his body, a failure of functioning: struggling organs, withering arteries, a stinging anguish. It was the same feeling he got the day Mira stole the hearing from his right ear. A feeling he despised more than any form of pain could bring. The absence of something essential.
He lifted his chin off his chest and surveyed the room. Deprived of his hearing, he was forced to rely on sight alone. Silhouettes didn’t linger in the shadow-filled corners, nor was there a discomforting presence of power hanging in the air. The room was bare, dreary. A snarling blaze filled the pit of a large circle cut into the floor. The flames surged at a consistent tempo, the way a vortex constantly swirled.
With that knowledge, Finnian let his head roll back down, allowing his exhaustion to show.
He closed his eyes and curled his fingers around the chains. His folded legs shook underneath him. The throes of his torment crested in aggressive waves, wearing down his mental fortitude with a harrowing persuasion that the agony trapped in his bones would never cease.
By what means had his father lasted so long? After centuries in Moros, what state would Finnian find him in? The horrors in his imagination stabbed through his chest like one of Shivani’s blades—his father, once immaculate, beaming with blossoms decorating his dark hair and a gaze as soft as a petal, broken, barely a husk of what he remembered.
Finnian needed to find him.
Father, guide me towards you.
He concentrated the small dose of his preserved energy into regenerating his injuries. Ruptured intestines gradually retracted back inside his body, and his skin slithered and stitched itself back together.
High Deities healed rapidly, and over the centuries, Finnian had excelled in regenerating. But because of the power-blocking manacles around his wrists, it was taking much longer than usual.
They were made from the Chains of Confinement. It was what the executioners used the day they escorted Father from Kaimana. A relic to bind a god’s divine power—and in this case, Finnian’s magic.
Fatigued by blood loss, he leaned the side of his head on the shackle’s chain. The handle of the blade lodged in his ear bumped against it, and a painful ache lanced through his skull.
He winced. “Fuck.”
The high-pitched ringing in his ear against the silence was louder than the cries trapped in Moros. Loud enough to serve as a blatant reminder of his weakness, coiling an unease in his mending gut.
Finnian lifted his head and did another sweep of the room, searching, thinking. His first priority for escaping and finding Father was to eliminate the shackles binding his power.
His eyes caught on the fuzzy, lush green moss trailing between the creases of the stone wall. It was odd for life to grow beneath the earth in such a sinister place, and those nonsensical patches of nature were not there earlier. Finnian had scoped out the room many times. The walls were nothing but dull gray slates of packed stone.
The vein of greenery stopped at the wall-floor junction, as if coming from beneath.
A smile curled his lips.
Thank you, Father.
A daunting sensation nipped up Finnian’s spine. A foreboding warning.
He stiffened.
Across the room, threadlike, golden tendrils snaked around an onyx cloud, and Cassian stepped out of its billowing form.
Amidst the white noise in his ear, Finnian could feel the vibration of his frazzled heartbeat.
Cassian waded through the pool of blood on the floor, the viscous liquid sticking to the soles of his suede shoes. He stowed one hand away in the pocket of his tailored suit. The light from the steady flames cast an otherworldly glow to his face—striking features, all angles and chiseled cuts, and pale skin, as smooth as an opal gem.
He stopped in front of Finnian and looked down at him.
Finnian met Cassian’s lethal, topaz gaze head on with tenacity, his ego consuming all common sense to keep his head down.
You will not break me .
Cassian undid the button to his suit jacket and crouched down, eye-level. “Why hello, Little Nightmare.” He enunciated the words for Finnian to read on his lips.
The nickname pinched at Finnian’s nerves unexpectedly. The first time Cassian ever called him that, it brought a sense of pride knowing he had disheveled the High God’s pristine little world. Now, though, it felt stale in his stomach.
“You don’t look too good,” Cassian said.
Finnian did not try to respond. Talking without his hearing was like attempting to drive with his eyes closed. Therefore, he maintained a dead expression, hoping Cassian would get to the point of his visit sooner rather than later.
Cassian reached out and brushed the wavy strands sticking to Finnian’s forehead away.
The tender gesture baffled Finnian for a moment, giving him little time to register Cassian gripping the blade’s handle and wrenching it out of his ear.
Finnian groaned, slumping forward and grimacing from the rush of blood purging behind his eyeballs. A blinding jolt split like an ax through his skull and his vision shook.
His eyes darted over the ruby red liquid at Cassian’s feet, up the blurred blob of his crouching shape. The instability of control spiked Finnian’s pulse. He blinked rapidly.
Warm liquid gushed down his jawline, but the violent shrill gave way to the reprieve as his ear drum mended.
Cassian tossed the blade across the room.
“Now,” he said, the single syllable leaving his tongue smoothly, “would you be kind enough to inform me of the whereabouts of the blood?”
A shower of relief watered down Finnian’s frenzy. He had never been more grateful to hear Cassian’s low-pitched, resonant voice than he was now. Behind it was the sound of the hushed roar of the fire, the trickling of his own blood oozing from wounds against the stone.
Finnian gave a tired chuckle and looked up at the High God. “Kindness is not a thing I grant to those who are meaningless to me.”
A flash of something glinted in Cassian’s eyes, an emotion Finnian could not decipher fast enough before oiled-bodied serpents slithered out from around the High God’s shoes.
They coiled around Finnian’s legs, up the line of his spine, settling their spade-shaped heads on his arms and shoulders.
His body went rigid.
Next to his unimpaired ear, he heard the hissing of their tongues.
Suppressing a shudder, he pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, determined to withhold any trepidation from slipping free on his face.
“What you endured from Shivani and my executioners is nothing compared to the agony I will bring upon you,” Cassian warned.
A serpent slipped up Finnian’s nape and into his hair. A wave of gooseflesh sprouted up his neck. “Your arrogance makes me nauseous,” Finnian spat back.
“I’ll be sure to inform Shivani your stomach has grown back then.”
Finnian’s eye twitched as he tightened his glare around him. “Let us strike a deal. I know how much you enjoy a good bargain.”
Cassian propped his elbow on one of his bent knees and cupped his cheek. He tilted his head, amusement shining in his golden gaze. “Oh, do tell.”
One serpent coiled around Finnian’s throat. Its thin, forked tongue tickled his Adam’s apple as it caressed over his chin.
Finnian swallowed, the motion stifled against the constricting hold of the serpent. “Free my father and the blood is yours.”
Cassian’s head fell back and a glissando of laughter sang out.
A retching pulled at Finnian’s belly as the sound hummed through him. His cheeks warmed, and he felt repulsed at finding any inkling of pleasure in it. He blamed it on the fact that it had been ages since he heard music. He missed it. That was all.
Glowering at Cassian, he said, “That is my deal. Take it or leave it.”
Cassian ran a hand through his wavy strands. A singular curl sprang free over his forehead. “Your father committed a grave crime long ago. Unfortunately, he is still paying the price, therefore he cannot go free.” His smile stretched further. “What else do you have?”
Saving Father was always a possibility, and hearing Cassian clip the end of that thread provoked a frantic rage to light in Finnian.
“The blood will never be yours,” he sneered. “I will find my father and escape your awful land.”
The serpent wrapped around his throat like a cool scarf gave a harsh hiss. Its scaly body hugged his neck in a warning.
“Unfortunately, you cannot leave, seeing as how your soul belongs to me now. It was what you agreed upon when trading places with Naia.” Cassian’s forearm lifted straight up, his long fingers curling in his palm. The large veins underneath his skin pulsed like black, poisoned worms up his wrist, staining the tips of his fingers as if he had dipped them in tar. “Now, I do recommend you cooperate. Otherwise, you know what comes next.”
A curse.
Finnian’s throat tightened.
It was impossible to determine the number of curses the High God possessed during his long lifespan. Certain ones stood out more and gained notoriety. Mira and Levina had received the Curse of Eternity. Naia’s first curse was the same. Her second curse was the Mercurial Exchange. The Curse of Weeping, The Call of the Void—all clever and unoriginal names, but worthy of the fear they bestowed in deities.
Finnian had great confidence in his problem-solving skills, resilience, and ability to overcome challenges. If he were a mortal, surviving would be a talent of his. However, uneasiness beat in the stride of his pulse, flickering with doubt.
“Which one?” he asked.
“The Kiss of Delirium.”
Finnian’s expression fell, making the mistake of showcasing the dread submerging through him.
“It starts as a quiet hum.” Cassian spoke slowly, as if to make sure Finnian could interpret each word without mistake. “Darkness the size of a pinprick. A parasite that nuzzles its way into the most precious parts of your mind. With time, it learns your weaknesses, what you fear most, and without realizing it, your mind plays tricks on you. Until it slowly leads you into madness.”
Finnian steeled his jaw, sick at the thought. The disturbing sensation of the serpents licking at his neck, up his pant leg, over his arms—it was too much. He wished to burn them to powder. More than that, he resented Cassian and his intoxicatingly powerful aura and patient disposition, as if he had all the time in the world to sit and watch Finnian decide his fate.
“You are a prideful god swathed in power.” The charcoal veins in Cassian’s forearm darkened, surging like ink through his palms and up into his fingers. “Power that took you centuries to hone and perfect. A deity of magic, of sorcery. Your biggest strength is your mind and all the knowledge it holds.”
Knowledge was his most prized possession. Planning, plotting five steps ahead. Memorizing hundreds of incantations and potion recipes. Centuries of lessons and techniques that had carved him into the god he was today. Losing self-control, his mind becoming corrupted, was his worst nightmare.
A nightmare he fully accounted for back when he came up with the idea to switch places with Naia.
He’d planned out his agenda ahead of time. From the moment his darling sister arranged to meet with him at the Kahale residence on Nohealani Island, pregnant and furious with him for summoning the triplets when she’d located him at Alke Hall. He knew the price of breaking Cassian’s curse, and he’d purposely hidden the truth from her. Although, he wasn’t foolish enough to believe Naia wouldn’t figure it out in the end. She was smarter than she believed herself to be.
Which was precisely why he’d shown up, concealed his aura, and watched Naia and Ronin take on Cassian from afar. Until the opportune moment. When the syringe of Ash’s poisonous blood fell from their hands, he swooped in and obtained his leverage to trade places with Naia.
The ticket to right his wrongs.
There were three things he must do. One of which was to free Father. The other two had been set in motion long before he became a prisoner.
He’d considered the chance of becoming cursed during the pursuit of rescuing their father in the Land. Should that occur, he would swiftly carry out his plan, enduring as much as he could. When he made it out, he would concoct a potion and break the curse himself— without sacrificing anything of importance. He knew there was always a way.
Looking back now, his faith in his resilience and strength might’ve been a conceited mistake on his part. Preparing to be cursed did nothing to lessen the reality of it, and now that he approached the threshold, hesitation froze his nerves to stand grounded and wrestle with such fate.
“And what will you do when your curse drives me to insanity?” Finnian narrowed his eyes at the High God. “I may end my life with the very thing you seek. What will you do then?”
Cassian moved closer, wafting a rush of citrus and mint up Finnian’s nose. “Even in death, you belong to me.”
Finnian’s mouth clamped into a tight line. A grim image appeared in his mind—down on his knees, pleading for death to free himself from the curse’s torment. He loathed the idea of death and its infinite void too much. Ceasing to exist, without a choice, a reason. He’d gladly wrestle with the torment of a curse over becoming Cassian’s prisoner in the Land.
A sharp anger burned through him, and he lifted on his knees, pushing into Cassian’s space. The serpents at his feet scattered. “I will not let your curse be my ruin. Death will not touch me. Ever .”
Cassian stared at him for a moment, intently. Something about it bristled warmth in the creases of Finnian’s bitterness. A distant, unfamiliar longing awakening inside of him. He could not make sense of it.
The snake around Finnian’s neck slowly retreated, slithering down his shoulder and onto the floor. It joined the others at the room’s center near the blazing pit of flames.
The soft tips of Cassian’s forefinger met Finnian’s exposed collarbone; the fabric had torn from Shivani’s torture.
Finnian’s breath hitched from the sudden touch.
Cassian grazed up the ridges of his throat, slowly cupping the side of his neck.
Finnian’s heart accelerated, and the sensation tingled in his bloodstream. He blamed it on his body, starved for any form of pleasure after months of misery.
Cassian’s thumb skimmed over the scar running up Finnian’s jawline and behind his ear.
A sour taste hit the back of Finnian’s throat. He’d forgotten about it. Without his divine power to maintain his glamor, it was on display for all to see, like a scroll pronouncing his weakness.
Finnian recoiled from his touch, but Cassian caught him by the throat. His grasp locked, applying enough pressure to bring discomfort.
Finnian sucked in a sharp breath, preparing for the snap of his vertebrae.
“Death cannot touch you?” Cassian’s eyes flashed up from Finnian’s scar, their golden hue shining fervently. “I am Death.”
Animosity surged viciously in Finnian’s pulse, heating the tips of his ears.
Circumstances would never become him. He had trudged through several hells in his lifetime. He would right the wrongs he’d made the day he allowed the triplets to trick him, ultimately leading to the demise of their father, his own banishment, forced to abandon Naia in Kaimana.
Nothing could hinder him, curse or not.
A heinous smile stretched across his face, revealing his blood-stained teeth. “Do your worst.”
Cassian’s fingers twitched around his throat, the muscles in his jaws flexing. “I loathe you.”
As the words left Cassian’s mouth, his large palm met Finnian’s pec. The contact was a collision ringing violently through his bones, a shrill scream blaring in his head.
Finnian cried out. The curse mixed with his blood, infesting every molecule, every crease of his brain, like the scouring of tiny insects burrowing and scratching their way into muscle and tissue, settling deep, deep, until a heaviness latched onto his soul.
He felt the mark brand his skin and crawl up his collarbone and over his neck—a boiling, mind-numbing agony. The muscles in his arms spasmed, and he slumped forward, his weight supported by the chains and Cassian’s hand against his pec.
That familiar illusory abyss clipped the edges of his vision.
Who do you loathe most?
“You—” Pain jolted through his temples. He winced. Like a spreading blight, he felt the clear sharpness, the proud methodical structure of his mind's web under its force. Another whimper left him.
Cassian leaned in, his lips hovering at the shell of Finnian’s left ear. “What was that?”
“ You .” Finnian jerked his chin up, looking over Cassian’s shoulder, his eyes set on the moss growing in the arteries of the wall. “You are the one I loathe the most.”